My hopes and fears for Manual for Streets 3

I still remember when the first Manual for Streets arrived.

For those of us working in towns and cities at the time in 2007, it felt like a small revolution. Here was a government document which said — plainly and without embarrassment — that streets were not just corridors for traffic, but places where people live. That design speed mattered more than posted speed. That geometry could respond to context. That safety did not have to mean ever-wider roads.

For a while, it changed things. But over time something else happened: Manual for Streets became guidance; guidance became optional; optional became ignorable. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the old standards crept back in.

Today, in many British towns and cities, streets are still being designed using documents never intended for urban life — sometimes even ones that explicitly say they should not be used there. Junctions grow larger. Crossings move further apart. Footways narrow. Cycle routes dissolve into nothing.

We do not need more guidance. We need a rule book

Everyone involved can explain why. The programme was tight. The risk felt too great. The standard was safer. The liability clearer. And so the street suffers. When the Department for Transport announced a new Manual for Streets — MfS3 — I felt something close to optimism again. But also a familiar anxiety.

Because, if MfS3 becomes simply another piece of guidance, however well written, however progressive — it will not change what happens on the ground. And we do not need more guidance. We need a rule book.

The problem that MfS3 must solve

The failure of street design in England is not a lack of evidence or expertise. We already know how to design safer streets. We know how to support walking and cycling. We know that lower speeds save lives, that tighter geometry reduces risk, that continuity matters more than isolated fragments of infrastructure. The problem is structural.

On one side of the system sits LTN 1/20: clear, evidence-based, unapologetic about the need to reallocate space for active travel. On the other sits the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (DMRB), a document written for high-speed strategic roads, which openly acknowledges that it is unsuitable for urban streets.

And yet, when pressure arrives – from legal teams, from delivery programmes, from fear of blame – it is the DMRB that too often prevails. Not because it is right. But because it is perceived as mandatory.

Manual for Streets 1 and 2 never resolved this contradiction. They argued persuasively for better streets, but they did not replace the operating system beneath them. They offered principles, not precedence. Encouragement, not enforcement. The third iteration must do something different.

What other countries understand

When we look beyond the UK, the contrast is instructive. In places that consistently deliver people-centred streets, design manuals are not aspirational reading – they are compliance documents. Germany’s urban street standards are treated as the recognised rules of the profession. In the United States, the MUTCD is written directly into regulation. In Australia and New Zealand, guidance is adopted across agencies and enforced through approvals and funding.

Flexibility still exists, but within structure. There is always clarity about three things: Which document applies; what is mandatory; and what happens if you want to deviate.

In England, that clarity does not exist for urban streets, and without it, the most conservative standard in the room will always win.

Guidance cannot compete with liability

We have seen this pattern before. Each new generation of street guidance arrives with the right intentions. The language is progressive. The values are sound. Streets are described as places, not corridors. People come before movement. Context matters.

But time and again, the same hesitation appears. At the point where principle must become instruction, certainty dissolves. Designers are encouraged rather than required. Processes are outlined rather than fixed. Multiple approaches are permitted without a clear framework for accountability.

The reassurance is familiar: nothing needs to be followed too strictly. It is well meant. It reflects trust in professional judgment and a desire to avoid prescription. Yet this softness is also why previous manuals struggled to reshape outcomes at scale. Because, when everything is optional, nothing is decisive. And, in a system governed by risk, guidance cannot compete with perceived liability, no matter how well it is written.

The unglamorous machinery that changes streets

If MfS3 is to succeed, it must include the boring parts – the parts that never make it into consultation summaries but determine what gets built.

It must be clear about what is mandatory and what is advisory. It must establish an explicit hierarchy between MfS, LTN 1/20 and DMRB. It must include a formal departures process, not to remove engineering judgment, but to make it transparent and accountable.

It must be auditable. Not because designers cannot be trusted, but because systems cannot rely on goodwill alone. Good designers do not fear clarity. They crave it.

People-first must mean everyone

One of my strongest hopes for MfS3 is that it finally embeds inclusive design properly – not as a technical appendix, but as a test of whether a street works at all.

Too often accessibility is reduced to compliance diagrams and minimum gradients. Meanwhile, streets remain hostile to people with visual impairments, cognitive impairments, neurodivergence, anxiety conditions or sensory sensitivities.

Inclusive streets are not just step-free. They are legible. Predictable. Calm. A crossing that is technically compliant but cognitively overwhelming is not inclusive. A space that might look elegant can make independent movement impossible.

If MfS3 is serious about people-first streets, it must say clearly: a street that cannot be navigated independently, safely and with dignity by disabled people is not compliant, regardless of how efficiently it moves traffic.

Retrofit is the real task

Another hope is that MfS3 finally acknowledges reality. Most streets already exist, and alongside the great challenge of designing new development correctly, how we repair, rebalance and re-imagine the streets we already have is fundamental.

Yet too much guidance still assumes a blank sheet of paper. MfS3 should state plainly that maintenance is opportunity. That resurfacing is redesign. That “like-for-like replacement” is a choice, not a necessity.

Cities change not through perfect schemes, but through cumulative retrofit. If the manual does not speak directly to that everyday reality, it will remain peripheral.

Why this moment matters

We are living through overlapping crises: climate, health, inequality, safety, and the slow erosion of public space. Streets sit at the centre of all of them.

They shape how we move, how safe we feel, who participates in public life and who does not. They influence emissions, air quality, social connection and economic resilience.

Manual for Streets was never really about geometry. It was about values. MfS3 has the chance to become something more than guidance – a shared civic contract about what our streets are for. But only if it is brave enough to move beyond suggestion.

My hope

My hope for the next Manual for Streets is simple: That it stops asking politely. That it gives practitioners permission, and obligation, to design streets around people, not vehicles. That it finally resolves the long-standing contradiction at the heart of our system. And that, in years to come, we look back on MfS3 not as another well-meaning document, but as the moment when England decided what its streets were really for: Life.